Memory
by Silver-Snow-77
Summary: For Lavilena Week 2k15 Day Five: Memory. Lavi's mind drifts between dreams and wakefulness in captivity, remembering flashes of his life—the good the bad and the in-between. The memory of promising Lenalee to come back alive (and in one piece if he can help it) gives him strength as Sheryl returns to torment him again. Companion to Day One: Promise.


**This is another one for Lavilena week, and while it is late on here, I posted it on the right day on tumblr so as to meet the deadline (because the mods are both tumblrites like me).**

 **Warning: There is some disturbing content here—as this is set in current canon, Lavi is a prisoner and being tortured. He is injured, locked up, and contemplating things while he's alone with his mind. For Lavi, this means dissociating, thinking very dark and misanthropic thoughts and hallucinating a bit from exhaustion and blood loss, possibily dehydration as well. WHike there are more positive things he focuses on as well, there's a lot of dark stuff in here and if you're not up for that then I suggest not reading any further** **.**

 **Disclaimer: DGM and all associated characters belongs to Hoshino-sensei.**

 **For Lavilena Week 2k15 Day Five: Memory.** **Lavi's mind drifts between dreams and wakefulness in captivity, remembering flashes of his life—the good the bad and the in-between. The memory of promising Lenalee to come back alive (and in one piece if he can help it) gives him strength as Sheryl returns to torment him again. Companion to Day One: Promise.**

The basement room is cold and hard, a twenty by twenty box of grey stone walls and floor and ceiling. There are no windows and only one door, which only opens when one of them sends an akuma in to fetch him for yet another torture session. The door (stained oak wood with a hairline crack running from the top left corner to just left of the center, iron finishings, and an unpickable lock) is firmly bolted shut to keep him in.

The whole mess is ultimately rather pointless, Lavi muses to himself as he slumps bonelessly against the freezing cold wall. If Sheryl is so desperate for information, why bother with them when it's clear that the Bookman intends to keep his silence? Rhode might be gone temporarily, but the other Noah are obviously not concerned over her being dead or permanently banished, and the Earl is unlikely to be pleased at having two exorcists hidden here in the same mansion once the Minister is found out. For a superhuman entity, the Noah of Desire is really far too controlled by emotion to be rational and use logical thinking to figure things out himself.

The thought makes the specter of Bookman Jr. laugh low and cold in his ears, no real mirth in the sound but the knowing acceptance that humanity seems doomed to repeat mistakes that snowball with time. The Noah, even with all their power, are still susceptible to human flaws of persona and judgement, and are arguably even more twisted than the murderers that walk with smiling masks of clean innocence in daylight and slaughter others in darkness, the rich who use power and money to send out others to do the dirty work that keeps them in power, the mercenaries and soldiers that plunder the livelihood, lives, and bodies of innocent and guilty alike when lost in the grip of battle-madness.

Ménis, the black all-encompassing rage preceding annihilation, lurks in the minds, hearts, and souls of the Noah Clan. Their golden eyes shine with the gleam of it, and within them oceans of the purest pitch-dark hatred boil and bubble like oil on the brink of combustion. Millennia upon millennia of existence without fulfillment of their vengeance on the world have caused the rage to burn brighter and hotter than the sun when sparked to life flow through their veins, ready to erupt like magma from a volcano.

The painful burn of Dark Matter is that corrupted emotion given form, and he can almost taste it sensing echoes of it from the wriggling parasites left within him by Fiidora and lying thick and heavy in the air like the humidity of a jungle in summer. The heart that should not exist is almost frozen in his chest as a tiny hidden part of him chokes in profound terror whenever it fluctuates and it takes every bit of his remaining strength to stay quiet and calm. They will likely kill him when this is done and cause him to vanish without so much as a footnote or a grave, and he fears it even knowing that he should have already resigned himself to the clutches of Death.

Even so, his jumbled musing on the dark depths of depravity that humans and Noah alike are caught in contrast with other memories, memories that give that whimpering fearful child hidden within reminders and the faintest light of hope, even knowing the dangers involved. In his mind's eye he sees glimpses of happier times with the people he had begun to allow closer than any before; Allen, Marie, Komui, Kanda, Krory, Miranda, Timothy, Reever, Johnny, Lenalee. Their faces appear to him like mirages before a man lost in an endless desert—with a similar distraction from pain and despair—and foremost among them is her. It is her who his mind seizes on most of all, despite knowing how hopeless his position is and knowing full well that he is unlikely to life to see her again.

The flash of red-and-green and biting winds as she dances through the air with the grace of a butterfly and the deadly precision of a dragonfly. Tears trailing down from shadowed eyes darkened to indigo in grief. Soft smiles with the faintest flash of even white teeth between pinkish-gold lips, contrasting beautifully with gold-washed porcelain skin that hides faint scars from a thousand battles and more. A gentle heart that can burn brighter than any candle when the time of reckoning comes, a heart broken many times before yet still holding onto what she considers hers with the protective wrath of a mother tigress towards an interloper that dares attempt harm on her charges.

Lenalee is beautiful and strong and fragile, but her fragility is not of mind nor of body (though to be certain if things really did come to an end she may lose her mind before succumbing to death) in the way one might think. She is broken, but her soul's shattered state is an intoxicating beauty that draws him in like the song of a siren does an unwary sailor, captivates the part of him that is Lavi and even tugs at the parts that are not. The shards that make up her heart and soul are clumsily mended and deadly sharp, ready to pierce those in her path should they prove to be foes and damaging herself for every time she extends and loses another fragment to the abyss.

The most compelling part of her nature is how such an inherently kind and caring person can be so terrifyingly ferocious without being consumed by the rage and losing entirely that same loving demeanor. The closest comparison he can give to her is Allen, but for all his kindness and self sacrifice, he clearly gained his more gentled demeanor through learned behaviors, and a part of him will always be half-wild and distrustful as an alley cat. Lenalee learned that process in reverse and refuses to forget her truest self even when it is considered by some to be a liability, because to forget her love would be to forget why she fights and why she lives and hopes and dreams.

Like all of the exorcists, Lenalee is touched by darkness, but she moulds it and sets it alight herself, using the heat of the inferno as fuel to keep her fighting and to hold out hope for an end. She willingly gave up the chance to escape the pain of her life of an exorcist and bound herself permanently in blood and body to her Innocence, and in that union came power almost beyond imagination. Even if he had the choice to stay an exorcist and allow himself to connect that way with his own innocence, Lavi is too afraid of what would happen to consider the possibility as anything but an unlikely nightmare, and he admires her and sorrows for her in the depths of his secret heart for her strength.

He can recall every conversation he has ever had with perfect accuracy in less time than it takes to say "innocence," but the one that currently haunts his mind is the final words he exchanged with her before he left for China with Bookman and that newbie Chaoji.

 _"Gee, Lenalady. I'll do my best to come back alive and in one piece, even if I can't escape a few bruises and a bit of blood."_

 _"I had better not need to come rescue you, Lavi. Take care of yourself!"_

 _"And same to you, Lenalady. We'd all be in a world of trouble with you brother if anything happened to you, princess."_

 _"I'll be careful, just promise me you'll do the same."_

 _"I promise, 'Kay? Oh! Just in case, have this. You never know what'll happen out there, and maybe it'll make a nice substitute until we're back!"_

 _"Lavi…"_

 _"Please? I have a spare, you can hold on to this one for me as a token. It's my favorite, so you better not lose it."_

 _"If you say so. Just remember your promise, or I'll be very upset with you."_

Remembering her fondly exasperated tone makes the heart he is forbidden to have ache in a way far beyond the physical, because he has broken that promise (through no intention of his own, but still) and he can only hope that she is safe and still fighting, still moving forwards. If any of the things he has overheard are true then things are going very badly, and even Junior responds slightly in the back of his mind at the particularly dire bits of information, even if only to consider how likely the information is to be true and how it may affect their current situation.

Lavi has heard from conversations between akuma and Noah alike that, among other things, Allen is badly hurt, being haunted by the growing presence of the 14th, and has been declared a traitor on the run due to the Earl's manipulations and those of something called the Apocryphos, and that Kanda vanished while on the verge of death himself only to reappear and then promptly vanish again. The thirds are all dead or taken by the Earl, Howard Link is dead, and many other tidbits that are various levels of demoralizing and outright appalling.

If even half of this is true then Central is not only slipping in upholding any remaining morals and codes of vaguely humane treatment for the exorcists, but also utterly failing to detect actual traitors and spies in the midst of their ranks. These are not the only pieces of bad news, but the knowledge of details make him sad as he considers how they must be faring and how Lenalee will be taking the news and the increase in pressure. She cares so deeply for all three of them that their losses would ache and fester like horrid wounds that can never truly mend without an ultimatum being reached.

Lenalee refuses to give in without giving her all, and he knows that even now she will be searching for him, encouraging efforts if not out in the furor. Lavi imagines that the spare bandana he handed her before leaving on that doomed last mission is clutched in her hand and perhaps even pressed against her heart as a reminder. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but he knows that he is considered an integral piece of the puzzle making up her heart and that his loss has no doubt left behind an aching hole in her chest.

Lavi can hear the echoes of footsteps on stone as Sheryl approaches, storming down the hall in a fury like a toddler in a temper tantrum yet a thousand times more dangerous. He swallows and shifts in place, knowing that he is in did even more agony as the bastard's personal punching bag, but the thought of having his hammer back in hand, of burning off that grimacing face, it almost makes him smile. Not quite as much as the image of Lenalee kicking Sheryl halfway to Russia and back with her boots activated, but any visions of comeuppance will do as a way to keep him somewhat sane and functioning.

He really hopes that he can leave soon or be rescued, because dying in this forsaken hellhole is not on his list of plans. Also, Lenalee still has his favorite bandana—he did swear that he wanted to come home in one piece and get it back, after all. For now memories and dreams must take the fore, but if he can spot a chance and utilize it, he'll be heading back as fast as he can.

 **That's all for this one, I hope it was a decent read at the very least. Flames will be ignored, comments and constructive criticism are appreciated. Bye bye~**


End file.
